SEO Hosting — Things To Look For In A Provider

Most of you know the advantages your business will gain through SEO hosting. However, as with other things, you know that there are top providers and there are wannabes. How do you find the right host? What are the things to look for before buying a plan?

1. Exclusive Class C IPs One of the reasons you decided to buy this specific type of hosting is so you won’t be affected by another webmaster’s errors. Therefore, it’s very important to check if your preferred provider gives exclusive UN-shared IPs. Don’t allow yourself to be short-changed. Make sure you are going to be issued your own unique set of class C IPs. That is, unless you have a good reason for opting for shared IPs.

2. Wide Class C IP Ranges You can easily buy unique IPs from any host. However, one of the benefits of SEO hosting is that you can handle the management of all your IPs from one management control panel. You also enjoy the convenience of dealing with just one hosting company and getting just one invoice no matter the number of Class C IPs you order.

One other thing you need to find out is if there is really room for you to grow. How many unique Class C IPs do they have? The more they have the better for you. However, this might NOT be a major concern to some people who might actually want to get their Class C IPs from a number of different providers (SEO strategies differ).

3. Fast And Reliable Network One of the things that count against any site is poor load times. This is why you have to ensure that your hosting provider has taken steps to guarantee lighting-fast load times. Also ensure that they have measures in place to reduce downtime to the barest minimum.

Apart from the fact that poor load times and increased downtime will cost you precious rankings (imagine Google bots coming to your site on one of those downtimes), it will cost you in poor user experience and wasted advertising spend.

4. Excellent Support You wouldn’t be going for SEO hosting if you were content with average hosting. Therefore, your provider must show that they understand this by providing excellent support. Their support must be very responsive, very knowledgeable and there for you whenever you need them.

In this business, waiting for an extra 24 hours to get issues resolved is quite costly. Therefore, the faster their turnaround times, the better for you.

5. On The Cutting Edge What worked last two years might NOT be effective today. And what’s working today might attract penalties tomorrow. Therefore, you will be better served if you pitch your tent with a provider that has a team of crack experts (or is affiliated with such people) in order to ensure that they make adjustments in their network to accommodate inevitable changes and take advantage of better technology.

Furthermore, it helps if your preferred provider gives updates to their customers on best practices and techniques that are either deprecated or detrimental.

6. Affordable But Value-Packed There’s NO way cost won’t be factored in whenever you have to make a business decision. After all, your expenditure will always affect your bottom line. Therefore, make sure you are getting competitive rates for value delivered.

Take note that I didn’t say cheapest or most affordable. You have to take a look at the price-to-value ratio in order to pick which provider offers the best. Some might offer very cheap plans but then end up cutting corners. So make sure you check what’s included in the plans before you make a pick.